Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus; an information processing method, and a storage medium which stores therein a program for performing the information processing method. Particularly, the present invention relates to a technique which is suitably used to chase an object by using plural capturing (or imaging) apparatuses.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a technique of chasing a suspicious person or the like by receiving, via a network, images respectively captured (imaged) by plural cameras installed in a broad area such as shopping mall, an airport or the like, and analyzing the received images has been disclosed. For example, as the technique like this, there is the technique described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-265922. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-265922, the area of a person is detected from the image captured by each camera, the feature amounts of the color and the shape of clothes are obtained from the detected area, the obtained feature amounts are compared, and then it is identified based on the compared result whether or not the persons in the images captured by the respective cameras are the same person.
If the number of the cameras to be installed increases so as to be able to widely chase an object, the amount of the data to be flowed and exchanged on the network increases. Thus, if the number of the cameras is large, there is a case where it is difficult to obtain the images of a high frame rate from all the cameras due to a limitation of the network band. Therefore, in the case like this, for example, it is conceivable to capture the objects at a low frame rate by a part or all of the cameras. However, if the object is captured at the low frame rate, the number of times enabling to capture the object in a unit of time decreases. Therefore, a possibility that the object image optimum for extracting the feature amount can be obtained decreases. Moreover, there is a possibility that it becomes difficult to capture a running person or a moving object in itself.
Besides, it is conceivable to lower a bit rate (i.e., a transmission speed) of the data transmitted from a camera because of the limitation of the network band. However, if the bit rate of the data transmitted from the camera is low, there is a fear that obtained image quality deteriorates. Therefore, in such a case, even if the object has been captured, there is a fear that it is impossible to adequately detect the already captured object.
As above, in the method as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-265922, there is a fear that it becomes impossible to chase an object because the relevant object cannot be identified sufficiently.
That is, in the above related art, it is not easy to reduce the load of the network while maintaining identification accuracy of the objects captured by the plural capturing apparatuses connected via the network.
The present invention, which has been completed in consideration of such problems as described above, aims to suppress both deterioration of identification accuracy of the objects captured by the respective capturing apparatuses connected via the network and an increase of the load of the network.